On Media

Study: Republicans flock to Drudge, Dems to Talking Points Memo

By MACKENZIE WEINGER

04/30/2012 03:09 PM EDT

A new comScore report finds that although many political websites attract visitors from both sides of the aisle, “they appear to still be more likely to regularly engage visitors who share the same views.”

Talking Points Memo has the largest percentage of readers who identify as Democrats, with 43 percent, followed by HuffPost Politics with 38 percent. Across the aisle, the Drudge Report has the highest percentage of Republican readers, with 41 percent, followed closely by Newsmax with 38 percent.

“Among the sites studied," Poynter's Jeff Sonderman notes, "Politico has the most balanced audience with 29 percent of readers identified as Democrats and the same percentage identified as Republicans. Daily Kos has the highest percentage of Independents, 46 percent of their readers.”

The researchers also found that "that although these sites feature a higher percentage of visitors from their respective political bent, there continues to be a notable percentage of visitors from the other side of the aisle, suggesting that people are not necessarily living in a partisan echo chamber and are in fact consuming more of a balanced media diet."